I found this interesting, and informational regarding some things I've wondered about from time to time:

Quote:After a recent event where I spoke about racial identity, a white woman sidled up to me, leaned in close so no one near us could hear, and said, “I’m racist.” Many people would be repelled. I was entranced. Here was someone who could tell me first hand how the racist mind worked. Social scientists have done studies on Klansmen and Neo-Nazis but those sorts of people are outliers, socially and mentally, while this woman was the sort of person you might encounter on a normal day. She seemed indicative of the sort of racist mind we’d be mostly likely to meet. She seemed normal. So I decided to talk to her and find out how her mind worked.

Studies show most people have some sort of prejudice or bias. “Decades of cognitive bias research demonstrates that both unconscious and conscious biases lead to discriminatory actions even when an individual does not want to discriminate,” write Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow. “The fact that you may honestly believe that you are not biased against African Americans, and that you may have black friends and relatives, does not mean that you are free from unconscious bias. Implicit bias tests may still show that you hold negative attitudes and stereotypes about blacks even though you do not believe you do and do not want to.” Part of the problem is the monsoon of negative messages about blacks coming at Americans which makes being non-racist almost like mentally swimming upstream.

Still, most people today are ashamed to be racist and know to do their best to never reveal it. So after this woman at the event told me she was racist, I said, “Really?!” in a way that indicated I wasn’t offended and that she could feel comfortable to speak freely. She did.

“I just have these thoughts,” she said, almost whispering into my ear. I felt like she was confessing as if I were her priest. “My mind just goes places. I can’t control it. I know it’s wrong but I can’t help myself. I say, Don’t think like that! But it’s what people told me when I was younger.” Then she leaned back and someone else said hello and our moment of penance concluded.

I wanted to hear more but I had heard enough to understand. She had mental habits based on ideas implanted long ago that had taken root in her subconscious. She’s got various stereotypes and biases firmly lodged in her long-term memory where she stores things like how to ride a bike. That’s why the thoughts feel like they come at her automatically and beyond her control—“My mind just goes places.” At this point, unlearning those perceptions would be as hard as unlearning bike-riding—if there were near-constant media messages and social reinforcements about how to ride a bike. And yet society has also taught her that she should be ashamed to judge people in this way. It’s sad that she knows she should not think racist thoughts but cannot stop herself because the lessons were learned and reinforced so well.

Racism is a mental tumor. It’s an acceptance of stereotypes, of otherness, of fear, of racial hierarchies. It requires embracing the concept of constants about certain racial groups even though there are no biological certainties about the races. Scientifically, there is only the human race. Race as we know it is a social construct and, in the sweep of human history, a relatively recent concept invented in America to justify having both “liberty for all” and slavery. Racism has long had sub-ideas protecting it like bodyguards—the idea that blacks were lesser human beings with inferior brain power and morality and criminal proclivities aided in the perpetuation of slavery, Jim Crow and the current wave of criminalization in which young black men are considered synonymous with criminals—some have captured this via the term “criminalblackman.”

Some people suggest that the multiracial embrace of Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Will Smith and others portends the end of racism. But this, as the writer Arundati Roy says, is like the President pardoning one turkey before Thanksgiving and then eating another—and America eats thousands. The human mind is complex enough to integrate hypocrisy and contradictions. There have long been extraordinary blacks who succeeded far more than the vast majority and were accepted as special. The racist mind need not hate every black person it encounters, and indeed not hating all may serve as a valuable safety valve, releasing pressure and proving to the mind itself that it is not racist. Few people want to think of themselves as bad or evil.

George Zimmerman provides a fascinating case study because his moment of evincing bias is caught on tape. He said, “This guy looks like he is up to no good — he is on drugs or something,” showing us he saw a Rorschach of a tall black boy walking in the distance and assumed he was a criminal and a drug user and to be feared. None of these things were true—in fact, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse has repeatedly found that blacks use illegal drugs at about the same rates as other races. Zimmerman is also said to have mentored two black children in his neighborhood. Does that prove he’s not a racist? No. Humans are filled with contradictions, so Zimmerman could have gotten to know those neighborhood boys and embraced their humanity but not extend the expectation of humanity to someone he didn’t know.When Zimmerman went to mentor those children he was one subself, and when he spotted Trayvon a different subself kicked in, powered by a constellation of thoughts that aligned black men with criminality.

Zimmerman was taught by society that young black men are on drugs and criminals and that fallacy sits in his subconscious alongside how to ride a bike. If he didn’t live in a world where people are constantly acting on that fallacy then he wouldn’t have that in his subconscious. Racism is not inherent like the ability to learn how to read. It’s learned. And we are teaching it well. http://ideas.time.com/2012/04/19/inside-the-racist-mind/

>_> It's Utah. There's actually often property covenants that restrict what race someone can be to move into a house and the number of people of a certain race who can live in a particular neighborhood. I'm serious. There are no black neighborhoods anywhere in Salt Lake City. They do live around here, just... kinda scattered.

There's gangs here too, but it's kinda like, so? It's Utah, they don't exactly pose a threat. The worst they ever do is toss shoes over the powerlines. I'd actually say that it's white male rapists in Provo you have to watch out for. There's like a cabal of them stalking this one city park in broad daylight, and there's been a lot of attacks on women.

In this case, literally - as in this past Tuesday, 04-17-2012.
Good fish too, place came with a solid reccomendation from the locals, and yeah sure, it's in the middle of West Willow, our local free-fire zone, but shit man, even the hoodlums lounging in the parking area were friendly enough - they thought my car was pretty nice, but knew better than to mess with it.
(funny thing about it, cause in an ass-backwards sorta way, them knowing that meant no one ELSE would mess with it neither, cause they'd warn em off)

Ain't too hard to get along with folk, you just gotta put some work into it, is all.

Last weekend. A new East African restaurant attached to an import store that's been there for ages. Who knew so many of our resident trolls were so scared of brown people? I mean, for Wulfman here, fearing the Negro is a true calling. He actually thinks that any white man who (I think the proper verb in this context is) mixes with a black element is doomed to suffer.

I think the best treatise on racism is to be found in the movie "Jungle Fever." People, of any race, who are brought up in a violent, authoritarian family system have two choices: protect the image of "their people" by projecting all the violence in their personal culture onto "the other," or accept reality and live as an outcast from your own people.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

I live in a neighborhood that is 50/40/10 black, white, hispanic. The largest city near me is 60% black. My neighbors on either side of me for 12 years have been black. The same couple on one side own and on the other side there were two owners for 3 years each. They sold to a white guy who rented it out to black tenants. First renters lived there for 4 years, totaled the place before they were evicted and it took the owner a year to put the house back together again to rent it to the current tenant. Who is not a bad fellow. A little motorcycle happy, but that's not the worst hobby.

It has been my experience that most folks who decry racial intolerance live in single race communities/neighborhoods. The worst racism I've ever seen was in Cicero, IL. Where they would BURN out black families who moved in to the town. That was 30 years ago. Things may have changed. In Rapid City, SD racial intolerance tended to be directed at the Indians. In Raleigh, NC there wasn't so much. If folks didn't like you, they would tell you to your face. It was remarkably civilized for what you'd think was an antagonistic environment. Probably the best place re: race I've ever lived. In the northeast, where I'm from, it is alive and well. Mostly in the cities. The small towns could never afford segregation. So all the kids went to the same schools, regardless.

But I was using a sarcastic comment to point out that everyone has a chink in their armor. Nice to see where the knee jerk reactions came from.

Oh, and for me it was about 3 weeks ago. Caribbean place. The jerked goat was good, but hot enough to burn the hair off your feet. Just as hot going out as it was going in.

Quote:But I was using a sarcastic comment to point out that everyone has a chink in their armor. Nice to see where the knee jerk reactions came from.

What does that mean, Cave? You asked a question, and people answered it individually. How is that a "chink" or "knee jerk"? They merely took your question seriously and answered in the same vein. Were you trying to "prove" something?

Oh, addendum to the above - since wendy felt that little moment at the end should be mentioned, and I really hadn't thought about it...

Now them guys hangin near the parking lot, they ain't good guys, or even nice guys - for thems unfamiliar with "da-hood" this is what's called 'cornering', they hang on the corner, drink a bit, talk some smack, maybe deal a little something here and there, and if a potential victim wanders by, maybe take advantage - about the only real threat they face is other yahoos who might try and take their corner from them, or knock off the competition, mostly the cops don't bother with it unless they're bored too and even then it's not so much to arrest them as shake them down, steal their money/dope and generally screw with them cause takin them off the street then deprives the boys in blue of their excuse to be what they are, in a way, they NEED each other, again I reccommend The Wire...

Contrary to popular belief that ain't a race thing, or even a culture thing, it's born of desperation and poverty, marinated in a crucible of modern tribalism - and who's the one guy the tribes don't fuck with, but the spooky witch-doctor, which is kind of the social facet involved here.

No, they weren't gonna mess with my car, oh hell no, from their viewpoint the damn things probably boobytrapped six ways to sunday, and why provoke something with the potential to bring all manner of shitstorm down on your heads with a guy who leaves you the hell alone so long as you respect his turf, and any newbie or outsider coming along thinkin about it is gonna get told the word so they don't wind up catching a ration of shit flowing over from the storm landing on someone else - and perhaps a tiny bit cause despite being technically on the "side" of the forces of law-n-order I don't stand in judgement and look down on them, some of them are aware I've played ball on both sides of that fence in my time, okay?

So we come out, with our little bag of trimmings for the kitty, and as I pass em by I give their Alpha a bump-n-shake, slipping a five into his palm, "Thanks for watchin my wheels home, grab your self a forty, eh?" - and he has this little moment of huh-wha which breaks into a real, honest, non-predatory grin and says "Damn, man you awright.." and I give a small smile and nod, and off we go.
Little things like that are also a chunk of the reason the local yahoos leave me be, it's not often they get, or are even offered, personal respect across tribe or "side" lines, which is an important thing to young men of any race, creed or culture and that too, translates into part of why they leave site three alone as well, a little respect back-and-forth, a subtle form of ghetto politics most folk don't understand.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/HighriskbehaviorRome.htm

But I was using a sarcastic comment to point out that everyone has a chink in their armor. Nice to see where the knee jerk reactions came from.

Looking over the responses, I see people answering from their personal experience. Except Wulfie, who makes assumptions about others based on those answers, without answering himself (though granted, we all know how he'd answer). That's the only knee-jerk reaction I see.

So yes, nice to see where the knee-jerk reaction came from.... just not surprising.

Quote HKC: "Accept reality and live as an outcast from your own people."
A great line. Not restricted to racism, but applies to most unpopular realities.
Of course, in a populated area, one can usually find other like-minded outcasts.

. . . . .The worst and most frequent consequence of paranoia is that it's self-fulfilling.

Quote:Originally posted by CaveTroll:
I live in a neighborhood that is 50/40/10 black, white, hispanic. The largest city near me is 60% black. My neighbors on either side of me for 12 years have been black. The same couple on one side own and on the other side there were two owners for 3 years each. They sold to a white guy who rented it out to black tenants. First renters lived there for 4 years, totaled the place before they were evicted and it took the owner a year to put the house back together again to rent it to the current tenant. Who is not a bad fellow. A little motorcycle happy, but that's not the worst hobby.

It has been my experience that most folks who decry racial intolerance live in single race communities/neighborhoods. The worst racism I've ever seen was in Cicero, IL. Where they would BURN out black families who moved in to the town. That was 30 years ago. Things may have changed. In Rapid City, SD racial intolerance tended to be directed at the Indians. In Raleigh, NC there wasn't so much. If folks didn't like you, they would tell you to your face. It was remarkably civilized for what you'd think was an antagonistic environment. Probably the best place re: race I've ever lived. In the northeast, where I'm from, it is alive and well. Mostly in the cities. The small towns could never afford segregation. So all the kids went to the same schools, regardless.

But I was using a sarcastic comment to point out that everyone has a chink in their armor. Nice to see where the knee jerk reactions came from.

Oh, and for me it was about 3 weeks ago. Caribbean place. The jerked goat was good, but hot enough to burn the hair off your feet. Just as hot going out as it was going in.

The worst places for racism here is the country towns, especially ones that have a white/aboriginal mix. Sheesh, they get bad. In a lot of those places recently the whites have been further unsettled by the settlement of African and Islander communities, but I think having a more complex racial mix will be better.

The least racist places are the large cities where there are waves of migrant groups who tend to move into a poor area, either transform that area and wait for the next wave of migrants that they can bitch about or move into more prosperous locations. Different cultural groups have different attitudes towards education and work. But that would be cultural and nothing to do with skin hue or inherent cleverness or any other tosh that racists drag out.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:Originally posted by CaveTroll:
When was the last time you went out to dinner in an inner-city black neighborhood after dark?

Congratulations. You're racist or you engage in racial profiling.

Discuss.

Last night. I live in an inner-city predominantly-black neighborhood, and last night I went out to pick up pizza to cap off a long week at work.

Who was I supposed to profile while I was out, because I must've forgotten to do that. Was it the kid who served my pizza, the woman who rang it up, the guy who cooked it, or the man at the convenience store where I stopped for a soda on the way home?

Or was it their customers, or the people in the parking lot, or the folks at the intersection, or my neighbors who waved and said hello when I got home?

Which one of them made me a racist for not bothering to remark on their race?

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:Originally posted by WULFENSTAR:
It is a apparent that most here have never had the joy of living in such places.

Like those in the past who built bungalows to "observe" the savages from their verandas... and give wonderful speeches (i.e anthropology), these banana hat wearing fools have nothing to offer.

Curse these people to live in the territories their ideals have created. Watch them crack.

I have. I do. Yet you are the one who cracked. Says something about your mental tenacity relative to mine, doesn't it?

Not sure what a "banana hat" is, but it always makes me think of Opus the Penguin...

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Pengy, I wish I still had my old t-shirt with Opus on it, dancing in his 'Nana Hat. :)

I love Opus.

"I have no real clue of what you're speaking." - AuRaptor.

"Yes. I was wrong. I am sorry." - AuRaptor.

Note to self: Mr. Raptor believes that women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.

Quote:Different cultural groups have different attitudes towards education and work. But that would be cultural and nothing to do with skin hue or inherent cleverness or any other tosh that racists drag out.

Ooh. Yes. Arguments about inherent traits I find are always coming from the grounds of questionable bias.

I don't even necessarily think that culture is even that big an influence... Everyone has to know how to survive, after all, whether culturally that's in an individual sense or a communal sense. So all humans are born with some idea at least how to rustle and hustle. At the same time, I think it might be some cultures just aren't in as big a damn hurry as others. And I have to say, the ones that kick back and spend time with their family, I can respect that. Some cultures take it easy right in the heat of the day, and someone coming into that culture might look at that and think it's lazy, when it's actually a sensible adaption to avoid heat stroke and stay alive.

I think that a lot of the negatives that we put on cultures are mostly relative, and have a lot to do with the conditions members of that culture live in. Poverty will always increase competition over resources and make people act questionably and indecent no matter who they are or what their roots are. Think it shapes people and how they act and how they treat members of their own group or outsiders.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:Some cultures take it easy right in the heat of the day, and someone coming into that culture might look at that and think it's lazy, when it's actually a sensible adaption to avoid heat stroke and stay alive.

Indeed. I learned the wisdom of that when I was printing t-shirts in a metal warehouse with no A/C and five big (6'x30') gas dryers all running at 450ºF. We put up a thermometer in the middle of the warehouse once, but I took it down and threw it away when it hit 130º, because at that point it was just cruel to know how hot it was!

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

Quote:Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
At the same time, I think it might be some cultures just aren't in as big a damn hurry as others. And I have to say, the ones that kick back and spend time with their family, I can respect that. Some cultures take it easy right in the heat of the day, and someone coming into that culture might look at that and think it's lazy, when it's actually a sensible adaption to avoid heat stroke and stay alive.

I think that a lot of the negatives that we put on cultures are mostly relative, and have a lot to do with the conditions members of that culture live in. Poverty will always increase competition over resources and make people act questionably and indecent no matter who they are or what their roots are. Think it shapes people and how they act and how they treat members of their own group or outsiders.

Fantastic, Byte. You have summed up something I totally believe. It's about clash of cultural values, not some people are worthless and lazy. A lot of indigenous cultures do not possess that driven protestant work ethic. Their traditional values emphasise family time and cultural time as opposed to spending every free moment working to earn money to buy things, which are also not that important to them.

NIKI2, I figured you would be grown up by now. Well God love you for wanting to believe in the best in people. Just don't be a fool. Racist is way over used today. You don't have to like people. If they stink, curse, aggressive, and no respect for you be aware. Judge and be safe. Crime is a big problem with the minorites. No more excuses in 2012. So if your old, crippled, and a woman you will be a victim. Just be aware of what your surroundings are. Now I always remember when I was 16 in 1980 with my uncle in a NY City subway. A black woman and a Italian lady stood next to us and my uncle said "They think were safe". Because there was a puerto rican gang at the other end. Well it's common sense. But what I saw in the 90s with liberals who I knew from London and San Francisco who always made innuendos like I was predjudice. I never understood why but because I was from the south I believe. So there you go. Now who's wife gets rape by the black man. There's do. This happen at least 4 times to different folks I knew. My opinion was they didn't use there smarts. So they didn't want to be accused of being a racist. I am not talking about having a neighbor or a coworker and treating them as less than people. But the inner cities are not safe. Not after dark for sure. As for renters anyone after 30 still renting is behind the curve in America. Keeping property up has nothing to do with owning the place if your ghetto your ghetto.

Quote:Originally posted by CATPIRATE:
NIKI2, I figured you would be grown up by now. Well God love you for wanting to believe in the best in people. Just don't be a fool. Racist is way over used today. You don't have to like people. If they stink, curse, aggressive, and no respect for you be aware. Judge and be safe. Crime is a big problem with the minorites. No more excuses in 2012. So if your old, crippled, and a woman you will be a victim. Just be aware of what your surroundings are. Now I always remember when I was 16 in 1980 with my uncle in a NY City subway. A black woman and a Italian lady stood next to us and my uncle said "They think were safe". Because there was a puerto rican gang at the other end. Well it's common sense. But what I saw in the 90s with liberals who I knew from London and San Francisco who always made innuendos like I was predjudice. I never understood why but because I was from the south I believe. So there you go. Now who's wife gets rape by the black man. There's do. This happen at least 4 times to different folks I knew. My opinion was they didn't use there smarts. So they didn't want to be accused of being a racist. I am not talking about having a neighbor or a coworker and treating them as less than people. But the inner cities are not safe. Not after dark for sure. As for renters anyone after 30 still renting is behind the curve in America. Keeping property up has nothing to do with owning the place if your ghetto your ghetto.

You really need to work on your grammar.

'Their' is the spelling of the possessive pronoun. ie if something belongs to someone it is 'theirs'. 'There' refers to place.

Quote:As for renters anyone after 30 still renting is behind the curve in America.

Makes the entire post completely ridicuous, given how little it recognizes reality!! I don't even need to refute that satement, it's so obvious.

The grammar mistakes are correct; I usually don't bother with those, or "there" being confused with "their", or the big bugaboo: "it's" and "its", because they happen so frequently, why bother? Nonetheless, the entire post is absurd; I take very good care of myself, thank you, and have never been accosted anywhere. In my opinion it is mostly because of my size, but that doesn't change that I am aware of my surroundings or uaware of dangers. Your assertions are absurd on their face, given you know nothing about San Francisco except what you've "heard". There are places in the City where it's not safe, but they are few and everyone know them--nonetheless even there a caucasian can walk at night and not be accosted. We have FAR more problems with Caucasians living in the suburbs than we do with inner-city groups. Partly that is because of Q (San Quentin); the families of people incarcerated there come here to be near them, and when they are released, they are released into the community most of the time. The majority of those are White, and they have caused crime in the area.

I note still no response from Cave as to my question. If he meant it as sarcasm or wrote it for some purpose, his claim of knee-jerk is totally irrelevant; people took the question seriously and responded with their answers, there's no knee-jerk there. I would still like to know the answer to that question.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Far more people have been robbed here

than have been robbed here

Jus' sayin'.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

Grammar Police again, Who cares. You got nothing to correct on the post but spelling big deal. Just like when I am in Frisco you always get corrected by a bum "It's San Francisco". My point is when you are 30 you should be making your own way. People who rent at that age will trash a place. I have seen nice homes go downhill due to blacks but that doesn't make me a racist. All the liberal whites I meet talk a big talk but are shit scared of blacks. I have lived in many big cities. LA was the most segregated city I ever lived in. And Kinko should drive through Compton and make sure he stops at every red light. I've been there. I have no problem going through a red light. Hey take a bus through that section of the city. You are not safe just riding the bus. Well you keep on thinking your stupid way honey. You will learn the hard way.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:Originally posted by CATPIRATE:
Grammar Police again, Who cares. You got nothing to correct on the post but spelling big deal. Just like when I am in Frisco you always get corrected by a bum "It's San Francisco". My point is when you are 30 you should be making your own way. People who rent at that age will trash a place. I have seen nice homes go downhill due to blacks but that doesn't make me a racist. All the liberal whites I meet talk a big talk but are shit scared of blacks. I have lived in many big cities. LA was the most segregated city I ever lived in. And Kinko should drive through Compton and make sure he stops at every red light. I've been there. I have no problem going through a red light. Hey take a bus through that section of the city. You are not safe just riding the bus. Well you keep on thinking your stupid way honey. You will learn the hard way.

I was in Compton and Watts in 2003. I spent a couple weeks in L.A. on Manhattan Beach, and just about anywhere I went, I went through Compton to get where I was going. That included being in Compton at 3am on a Saturday night, where I stopped at every red light, and wasn't stabbed, carjacked, robbed, threatened, beaten, or killed.

But I had the same issues when I lived in the Dove Springs/ "Cranklin Park" area of Austin, too. Black people resolutely refused to rob or kill me, despite all the warnings white people gave me that such behavior was all they were capable of.

Treat people like people, and they just might treat you the same. Treat them like trash, and they might do likewise.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

Quote:Originally posted by CATPIRATE:
Grammar Police again, Who cares. You got nothing to correct on the post but spelling big deal.

Actually, your whole post was absurd and the best I could do was help you with your grammar. An odd mistake here or there is no big deal. We all do it. But when the whole post is semi literate and contains simplistic, foolish views....well, you are not doing yourself any favours.

I was in Compton and Watts in 2003. I spent a couple weeks in L.A. on Manhattan Beach, and just about anywhere I went, I went through Compton to get where I was going. That included being in Compton at 3am on a Saturday night, where I stopped at every red light, and wasn't stabbed, carjacked, robbed, threatened, beaten, or killed.

But I had the same issues when I lived in the Dove Springs/ "Cranklin Park" area of Austin, too. Black people resolutely refused to rob or kill me, despite all the warnings white people gave me that such behavior was all they were capable of.

Treat people like people, and they just might treat you the same. Treat them like trash, and they might do likewise.

I tend to avoid mobs of people of any hue, particularly groups of composed of only young men. I'd feel uncomfortable having to walk past or through them.

People can get a bit tribal, particularly young men, and divide the world into 'us' and 'them' based on whatever glue binds them together. Race is certainly one of the binding agents.

Young men in groups can be intimidating - sometimes young women too. There are a lot of hormones and aggression that roll around your system, and you tend towards risk taking activities. Alcohol and drugs can highlight these. As can feeling disenfranchised from the world you live in. As can having a lack of meaning (outside your group).

There are lots of factors involved. Skin colour, except as an identifier, is really not high on the list.

Well when you ramble and tell but not correctly in speaking your minds eye thing fall flat and especially wen your being beeligerently dopey like what your saying others do but not whites more the folks with skin pigments but. Thats not valid any way and your point is made not well and we kinda have a time reading your point not easily like the hard time you're having reading this right now. Get it?

Wen you cant get your piont acros becase you're spelling and grandma are so difficult to read and wen you're argument does'nt make any sence anyway becase you're way of thinking is really very simplistic and bigoted at least that is wat some one once told you some were were you where and they where probably rite to then it becames very tyresome to trie and work out wat in the hell is being said.

LOL, Those who teach can't get a job in the real world. Those who fail at teaching become intellectuals. All the posts on my grammar I have caught mispelling their own posts such as Kinko and CA. And Kincko is a liar when it comes to being in Compton at 3am. Plus your either picking up black boys or crack. White collar clerks make a big deal in the office over the little things. It's major drama over nothing. I hear this crap all the time. But it is always the libs that get violated. They always need my help too.

Quote:My point is when you are 30 you should be making your own way. People who rent at that age will trash a place.

What incredible statements, and they show just how ignorant you are! You sound like Wulf; all you know are your own narrow little experiences. The vast majority of people 30 or under cannot afford to even BEGIN buying a house, especially in this market! I don't think most people think of buying a home until they're married, and maybe have a kid, and people are marrying later than they used to. It just makes o sense. Now, my experience is that people UNDER 30, like more around 20, trash places, and the FACTS are that any rental place won't be kept up as well as one that is owned. That has always been true, whatever race is involved. How about some real FACTS:

Quote:Homeowners in the United States also tend to have higher incomes and households residing in their own home were more likely to be families (as opposed to individuals) than were their tenant counterparts.

There is a strong correlation between a household's family structure, type as well as the age of and homeownership. Overall married couple families, which also have the highest median income of any household type, were most likely to own a home, while female singles, who had the lowest median income of any household type were least likely to own a home. Age played a significant role as well with homeownership increasing with the age of the householder until age 65, when a slight decrease becomes visible. Only 43% of households with a household under the age of thirty-five owned a homeWiki

Also, in the current market,

Quote:As more people move from owning to renting, apartment vacancy rates have fallen fast, from 8 percent in 2009 to 5.6 percent in third quarter 2011. Those trends are just the beginning, concludes a July report from investment bank Morgan Stanley: the United States is becoming a nation of renters and home ownership will keep falling.

This change, triggered by the 2008 housing collapse, has shifted people’s views of home ownership. The number of those who consider a home a safe investment fell from 83 percent in 2003 to 66 percent this year, according to a survey by Fannie Mae and two other organizations. In another poll last April, commissioned by real estate data firms RealtyTrac and Trulia, 40 percent of renters questioned said they plan never to buy a home.

Many experts now challenge the conventional wisdom that owning is a necessarily a sound life choice. Forbes contributor James Altucher argues that buying a home is a trap—houses are illiquid investments that drain their owners’ time, energy, and cash and force them to stay put. Another skeptic is Yale economist Robert Shiller, co-creator of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. He compiled data in 2006 showing that between 1890 and 2004, the return on investing in houses was just 0.4 percent a year—a period when the stock market grew at 9.6 percent annually. And in a paper this June in the journal Real Estate Economics, two researchers calculated that over the past 30 years, most often it would have been better to rent than buy. Renters who invested in stocks and bonds instead of home equity came out ahead 75 percent of the time.http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/01/04/The-New-American-Dream-Rent-Dont-Buy.aspx#page1, your statemnts are incorrect, irrelevant, and reflect nothing but your own beliefs.

So here we have a prime example of not only the racist mind, but the ignorant, and I would say dumb and prejudiced, one.

Magon's, the relations of European stock and native individuals in Australia is something that I've always wondered about ever since my uncle went to Australia and came back saying things didn't appear to be very good from his observations. Of course everyone is different and there's no way to lump everyone together on that, but where would you say things are worst, Australia being a big place and all. Where would you say they are best?

As an aside, I've always found the word "racism" to be weird, insinuating that we're as different as humans and Klingons lets say, that seems more like "racism" whereas what we experience here in real life on planet Earth seems like it should be called "ethnicism" instead, since we all have the same DNA and our blood is the same and pretty much everything is the same on a basic level, we all have the same organs and brains and genes.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:Originally posted by CATPIRATE:
LOL, Those who teach can't get a job in the real world. Those who fail at teaching become intellectuals. All the posts on my grammar I have caught mispelling their own posts such as Kinko and CA.

I was actually there picking up a load of Honda engines and transmissions out of Japan, and attending the premiere of "The Hulk" with a friend who was a tech director on the movie and a fellow CRX enthusiast. So here's me, a big ol' white boy in a big ol' white van chock full of rare JDM Honda bits (6 B16 engines, 12 ZC transmissions - one of which turned out to have a factory-installed Mugen limited-slip differential, which now resides in my own personal car, and various other JDM goodies), in the middle of Compton, 3am, and nothing calamitous befalls me.

Did you know there's an airport in Compton? That really threw me for a loop! We passed by it near every day I was there. Sure, I'd heard the stories about how bad South Central was, but in reality it didn't really look any different from my neighborhood back home. Just another place with poor folk trying to get by. Y'know, those kinds of people they say history stepped on. Now where have I heard that before...?

Quote:White collar clerks make a big deal in the office over the little things. It's major drama over nothing. I hear this crap all the time. But it is always the libs that get violated. They always need my help too.

I can't say anything about that; I don't know any "white collar clerks" myself. I'm about as blue-collar as they come.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

Magon's, the relations of European stock and native individuals in Australia is something that I've always wondered about ever since my uncle went to Australia and came back saying things didn't appear to be very good from his observations. Of course everyone is different and there's no way to lump everyone together on that, but where would you say things are worst, Australia being a big place and all. Where would you say they are best?

Yeah, we are a huge country. Different environments, state governments, population levels. In the southern eastern regions, the most heavily populated, the Aboriginal populations fared the worse. Fertile farming lands and white setters and indigenous hunter were not an easy combination. It's hard to give you a full picture of what happened, but there are parallels with the situation with Indigenous people in America. Aboriginals in Victoria, my state, tend to be urbanised, of mixed blood, have lost most of their language and have remnants of culture. They are also highly politised, educated and vocal.

In remote parts of Australia, the northern and central areas, you still have populations where English is a second language, culture is still strong, but some remote communities can be a hotbed of social problems like child abuse and violence. There are also strong racial and cultural tensions between white and blacks.

I dunno what the answer is to it all. There is a history of displacement, violence and genocide by the europeans against the indigenous people of this country. There is also a history of well intended but disastrous government intervention. There is also a strong racist vein that runs through our psyche. The White Australia policy ie restriction of non whites immigrating was an active policy in the 20th century. Aboriginal people were not entitled to vote until 1967.

But we have changed as a country into a multicultural society and i think, largely accepting of multiculturalism. Except for Aboriginals. I don't know why, but it seems they are considered to be kind of invisible embarressment in the southern states, and considered a cultural nusiance in the north.

Hi Magon's, thanks for the honesty. No country is perfect. It really makes me sad when people lose their language. I'm a big fan of minority language rights, being such an enthusiast about all things Irish and all. Now if I was any good at learning languages instead of just talking about how cool they are then I could really get somewhere. :)

For years, my father, a federal employee with a top secret clearance, carried
a copy of his birth certificate when he went into Baja California from our home
in San Diego. Many times, when he tried to reenter the U.S., he was stopped
by the Border Patrol.

My father had thick black hair and naturally dark skin, and the Patrol thought
he was a Mexican brazenly trying to sneak back into the country by claiming to
be married to the black-haired, blue- eyed, light-skinned woman he claimed was
his wife. Once back home, he faced discrimination because neighbors thought he
was Mexican; the ones who knew better discriminated because he was a Jew.

When I was 11 years old, we moved about 120 miles north to a suburb of Los Angeles.
My parents bought a house in a new tract of about 150 houses, all owned by Whites
and a few Hispanics. Three or four years later, a Realtor came by, plastering flyers
on all the houses, announcing he had a special real good, one-time only deal. ... [more]

Good article.

. . . . .The worst and most frequent consequence of paranoia is that it's self-fulfilling.

All FIREFLY graphics and photos on this page are copyright 2002-2012 Mutant Enemy, Inc., Universal Pictures, and 20th Century Fox.
All other graphics and texts are copyright of the contributors to this website.
This website IS NOT affiliated with the Official Firefly Site, Mutant Enemy, Inc., or 20th Century Fox.